Independent Internet portals are waging an information war against Belarus’s police, Interior Minsiter Ihar Shunevich said in an interview to state-run TV-station Belarus 1.

The minister did not specify what exactly he meant speaking about ‘information war’, but one can guess that he might have referred to a wave of criticism after a fatal incident in Baranavichy where a young woman was deadly hit by a car driven by the drunk head of the local traffic police. According to the minister, outrage on web is part of a vast operation to discredit the authorities.

“Studying the experience of almost all color revolutions that have occurred lately, we can conclude that all of them started with discrediting the government and the most powerful agencies. I believe that the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs is one of the most solid assistants in maintaining law and order in the country. I think they are trying to play out the same scenario,” he said.

When the host of the programme asked whether the scenario of ‘casting law enforcers on their knees first and then deposing the government’, the minister replied in the positive. However, according to him, the corresponding agencies stay alert and will take countermeasures if some forces attempt to to hurl the country into chaos. In parlicular, he mentioned that the Belarusian police had water cannons.

Mr Shunevich failed to ask forgiveness of the killed woman’s family, but heblatantly returned to the issue of ‘information warfare’ allegedly unleashed against his ministry.